2015/2016 Book

Our choice for 2015/16 is a novel. It takes us into the fictional realms of a research laboratory.

“An intricate mystery and a rich human drama set in the high-stakes atmosphere of a prestigious research institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A charismatic doctor and a rigorous scientist are co-directors of a cancer research lab. They demand nothing less than complete dedication and obedience from their young protégés. In this high-pressure setting, one young man’s experiments begin to show exciting results. At first the entire lab is giddy with expectation. But his colleagues become suspicious, and soon an all-too-public controversy engulfs the lab and everyone in it……

Intuition is a rich and compelling human drama about the quest for ‘truth’, that asks, ‘who can you trust when you aren’t even sure you can trust yourself’?”

What the critics say

“With extraordinary insight, Allegra Goodman brilliantly explores the intricate mixture of workplace intrigue, scientific ardor, and the moral consequences of a rush to judgment. She has written an unforgettable novel.” (Book Browse)

“Goodman has succeeded in conveying both the quasi-religious intensity of the lab, its idealism in the pursuit of knowledge, and the inconvenient human flaws that undermine this idealism – of which, ironically, the very hunger for answers is itself perhaps the most dangerous.” (Elizabeth Lowry, The Guardian)

Allegra Goodman is an American author of a number of novels and collections of short stories. She graduated from Stanford University with a PhD in English Literature and comes from a family of academics. She was named by the New Yorker as one of the twenty best American writers under forty, has won several awards, and was shortlisted for the US National Book Award for her novel Kaaterskill Falls. Intuition was longlisted for the Orange Prize for fiction in 2009 and was her first book to be published in the UK. She lives with her family in Cambridge, Massachusetts.